Are athletes really getting faster, better, stronger?

Are athletes really getting faster, better, stronger? | David Epstein

When you look at sporting achievements over the last decades, it seems like humans have gotten faster, better and stronger in nearly every way. Yet as David Epstein points out in this delightfully counter-intuitive talk, we might want to lay off the self-congratulation. Many factors are at play in shattering athletic records, and the development of our natural talents is just one of them.

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The Olympic motto is “Citius, Altius, Fortius.”Faster, Higher, Stronger.And athletes have fulfilled that motto rapidly.The winner of the 2012 Olympic marathonran two hours and eight minutes.Had he been racing against the winnerof the 1904 Olympic marathon,he would have won by nearly an hour and a half.Now we all have this feelingthat we’re somehow just getting betteras a human race, inexorably progressing,but it’s not like we’ve evolved into a new speciesin a century.So what’s going on here?I want to take a look at what’s really behindthis march of athletic progress.